Was working with a customer who required simple IP-based redirection for Drupal Sites.
Was analyzing the various existing options:
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Smart IP : Looks good. But sets sessions which break Varnish Caching. Most Drupal sites run from behind Varnish Reverse Proxy and using Smart IP would mean either forgoing varnish caching or having to add complex VCL rules.
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Geo-Redirect : Again, would not work well with Varnish. The first redirection will be cached on Varnish and all subsequent users from different countries might be redirected to the cached redirection. Requires additional GeoIP.dat file to be downloaded and this should be updated frequently.
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Using MaxMind API : Most hosts like Acquia allow the Maxmind API to be integrated on the balancers so that Varnish maintains country code in the cache (preventing the same redirection to be cached). The country code is added to the headers in both request and response. This is the ideal way to implement GeoIP for any enterprise site. But it requires dedicated load balancers, and there is no plug-and-play module to utilize the API requiring custom development.
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And a plethora of other modules that break varnish in similar ways..
What I wanted:
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Simple country-based redirection
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Should not break caching / varnish
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Should not require GeoIP datafiles to be downloaded and maintained
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Should be simple and light-weight
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Good-to-have, though not mandatory : Zero or Low subscription cost
A hour-long search resulted in nothing significantly useful for Drupal.
Finally found this API : http://www.telize.com/ . Sounded promising.
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The API powering the site is opensource
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There is no rate limit of any sort at the moment, and the service is free for everyone to use.
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Used GeoLite data created by MaxMind
The API was exciting but still it was not something that could be plug-n-play’ed on Drupal.
Built this module - https://www.drupal.org/project/telize
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Simple Country-based redirection
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Redirection happens at front-end through JS. Works on top of Varnish
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Does not set any session cookies. Won’t break your Varnish
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No subscription required
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No additional files/libraries required
Try it out of you have simple GeoIP redirection requirements.